Arcticidae
The Arcticidae are a family of marine clams in the order Venerida. The only living species in the family is Arctica islandica. There are also many fossil species classified in a number of genera.

Jan Johan ter Poorten · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ArcticoideaPBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Venerida
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Venerida
- Motility
- facultatively mobilePBDB, for Venerida
- Vision
- blindPBDB, for Bivalvia
Time the record covers
At least 239 million years on record.
The record covers at least 239.48 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 0 Mya.
2,239 occurrences of Arcticidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2,239 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassic5%
- Early Jurassic9%
- Middle Jurassic16%
- Late Jurassic19%
- Early Cretaceous9%
- Late Cretaceous35%
- Paleocene1%
- Eoceneunder 1%
- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Mioceneunder 1%
- Pliocene2%
- Pleistocene2%
- Holoceneunder 1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
337 formations
- Kap Leslie Formation117
- Prairie Bluff Formation · Selma Group79
- Tataouine Formation62
- Carmel Formation59
- Providence Formation57
- Twin Creek Limestone Formation51
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The named rock units Arcticidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 313 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 474 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Arcticidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Arcticidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,693 taxa- Camptonectes71 sites
- Astarte70 sites
- Pinna61 sites
- Arctica60 sites
- Entolium orbiculare58 sites
- Ammonoidea55 sites
- Isognomon53 sites
- Panopea51 sites
- Nuculana47 sites
- Grammatodon45 sites
- Hartwellia45 sites
- Isocyprina45 sites
- Buchia mosquensis44 sites
- Pleuromya43 sites
- Modiolus40 sites
- Pholadomya38 sites
- Taimyrothyris38 sites
- Veniella38 sites
- Nucula37 sites
- Belemnitida35 sites
- Protocardia striatula35 sites
- Cucullaea31 sites
- Inoceramus31 sites
- Plagiostoma30 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 1,505 sites for Arcticidae, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
330 references- Unpublished data212
- Unpublished data on Cretaceous-Paleocene molluscan assemblages119
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) Mollusca from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the East Gulf Coastal Plain115
- Genesis and environmental significance of Upper Cretaceous shell concentrations from the Cauvery Basin, southern India76
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrates from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the Atlantic Coastal Plain with further data for the East Gulf71
- Palökologie benthischer Faunengemeinschaften und Taxonomie der Bivalven im Jura von Südtunesien68
- Marine Jurassic Pelecypods From Central and Southern Utah66
- Palokologie und zeitliche Verbreitung benthischer Faunengemeinschaften im Unterjura von Chile57
- Upper Cretaceous (Maestrichtian) larger invertebrate Fossils from the Haustator bilira Assemblage Zone in the west gulf Coastal Plain49
- Stratigraphie und Biofacies der Koessener Formation (Obertrias, Nordliche Kalkalpen)48
- Twin Creek Limestone (Jurassic) in the Western Interior of the United States48
- The larger invertebrate fossils of the Navarro group of Texas37
Each of the 2,239 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 318 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Arcticidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Johan ter Poorten
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Arcticidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Arcticidae”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itArcticoidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Newton 1891